10 hours Ago By Variety
Maren Morris’ fourth album is titled “Dreamsicle,” and it’s about not exactly living the dream. One of her previous biggest hits was “The Bones,” about how a house built on a strong foundation will last, so it’s telling that this album is named after a fairly opposite scenario — a confection that is designed to be consumed or go away quickly. The symbol of the Dreamsicle alludes to a theme running through the songs of how good things can go bad, or just dry up.
.. something it won’t surprise any of Morris’ fans to be hearing about, given what she’s gone through in the last few years, most principally a divorce.
Yet the Dreamsicle is also a symbol of pleasure, and Morris has done nothing if not go out of her way to make certain that there’s a lot of that in this new album, too, along with more reflective or downbeat numbers. You can’t spell popsicle without pop , and Morris is unabashedly embracing a wider array of styles that fall under that umbrella on this album. That’s something she was already doing in the three albums she previously made for Sony’s country division, but it feels like an even greater freedom she’s feeling now that she’s allied with the New York office, right along the freedoms of being single again that are extolled in some of the lyrics.
“Dreamsicle” is a terrific confessional-pop album with occasional acoustic shadings that represents a true worst-of-times/best-of-times scenario for one of the most gifted artists to come out of Nashville in the last decade. More from Variety Variety spoke with Morris following the album’s release about how “Dreamsicle” is or isn’t a “divorce album,” working with an array of new co-writer/producers like Jack Antonoff this time around, and how an album built on sadness and feistiness also makes room for an apology song and addressing life’s big socio-spiritual questions. When we talked with you at the Girls Just Wanna Weekend festival at the beginning of the year, you said, “It’s not a heavy divorce record, just because I didn’t want to do that.
I just wanted to capture the year of aftermath.” And now that we’ve all heard it, it feels like you may have given yourself a mandate to have a certain amount of fun songs on this album, along with the heavier ones. Did that come out of just wanting to make sure the entire collection wasn’t too serious, or actually feeling like there was a certain defiance to what you were feeling that could also lends itself to light-heartedness? Was it tricky to come up with a balance where you are going to have those very dramatic songs, like “This is How a Woman Leaves,” and then some really upbeat songs, like “Lemonade,” that perhaps riff off some of the same experiences? Yeah, it’s intentional on my part to really hone in on it.
This is the first record I’m making after all of these big upheavals, and anyone that pays any attention to my life beyond just my work would probably know what I’ll be writing about. But I didn’t want to fall into this trap for myself, creatively. I wrote tons of songs about the saddest days of my life, and that is represented on this record.
But I also went through so many other manic phases of joy and empowerment and feeling like a human being again after that long, long grief period. So, because I kept writing through all of those processes, I think that it made sense to honor the grief I went through, but also document the rise that happens out of the ashes and have a hopefulness to divorce. I love sad songwriter music, but as someone that’s writing it myself, I want to give myself the time to really heal from it and not be stuck in this bubble of sound for the next three years.
I feel like I’m an every-three-year album artist, and I didn’t want to be stuck in this time loop of sadness. And I think the records outlive your emotions or your experience, sometimes, because they’re forever. So I really wanted to be meticulous in the amount of songs I was writing and also meticulous in the ones I’m choosing to represent this snapshot of time.
So I think that I avoided, in my own head, the sort of sad divorce album — while also honoring and addressing it. That’s the balance I was pretty intentional to strike. And, yeah, starting the record with “Lemonade” was my way of being defiant and saying, “This is not the the thing you’re going to expect.
” Setting the mood with a song like that at the top of an album is really exciting for me. But funnily enough, I wrote “Lemonade” on one of the saddest days I ever had as a human being. And I can maybe just credit my co-writers for humoring me and my idea that day with that title, but also really taking it in a direction of humor, because I think I just needed to feel something other than depression that day.
You hit so many different moods on this album. Probably many people going through a divorce would, if they were songwriters, write extremely downtrodden songs but then also some that are fun and bouncy, going through the stages of a split. Yeah, exactly.
I think it’s our responsibility to ourselves, going through so much healing and therapy through that time just to be able to stand upright, and truly knowing that there is an end to that feeling just takes time. If I had put something out like a year ago, it would’ve been that album of just sadness and anger and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet. And I wouldn’t have wanted to promote or tour that kind of album.
So I needed to wait and give myself the time to write and heal. One thing that’s common through a lot of the songs, whatever the mood, is that you come off as a very proactive person in the circumstances. That’s not surprising, because even going back to your debut album, and addressing complicated situations in those lyrics, it often felt like you were kind of the one making the decisions, like in the song “I Wish I Was.
” Throughout a lot of your material there’s an attitude that “I’m taking control of this, however hard it is,” sometimes cloaking that in being the person who is right and sometimes just being more more objective about it. Yeah, I think not being the hero is a powerful place to be in, because it’s just (owning) a deep sense of accountability, which isn’t the most fun thing to be. But I think that was a huge growth moment for me, in songs like “Grand Bouquet,” just realizing that you’re not a victim.
Like, some crazy shit has happened to you, but you have also been holding the reins for a lot of it, and almost being in a place of of apology, of just like: “I’m sorry I couldn’t be the human that you thought I was. I have grown. You’ve grown.
And I wish that we could have grown together, but it just didn’t work out that way. There’s still all this love here, so what do we do with it?” And like with “I Wish I Was,” those are sometimes the most profound, interesting perspectives, because it’s like, “Whoa, this person isn’t an asshole. They’re not the good guy, they’re not the bad guy.
” I think that’s a way more interesting perspective than one or the other polarities. I like going through all of those thoughts and then ending the album in a place like we do. We start in this place of sort of sardonic defiance with “Lemonade,” and then end with “Holy Smoke,” which is a more worldview level of: Can we all just fucking figure it out? We’re all here for such a finite amount of time, and we’re just eating each other alive, and the hypocrisy is doing the same.
And I just want to find peace — don’t we all? So it tackles so much humanity in basic relationships, and then by the end, with “Holy Smoke,” that’s kind of my “losing my religion” song. That’s a song I did with Jack (Antonoff). Musically, showcasing these really polished pop songs is something I love.
But then I also love those raw moments like “Dreamsicle” and “Holy Smoke,” where it’s just musically unexpected. “Holy Smoke” might be a personal favorite song on the record, even though it’s a little bit of an outlier, as you say, in looking at a big picture with social or religious themes versus a relationship song. It’s easy to imagine a lot of ex-vangelicals relating to that as an anthem.
You’ve taken some heat over the years for being outspoken, and maybe that comes from people who you might think of holy rollers. It sounds like the song is your response to people with a religiously based sense of great certainty about everything in the world. I mean, I think if you’re so certain about something, you have such a lack of curiosity, and that is an intriguing concept to me as a writer and as a person.
I feel like the sort of deconstructionist mentality has been me since like 8 years old — always questioning, always wondering, always...
we keep using that word defiant, but certainly not rebelling to rebel, but just to find the truth, and always remaining curious. I think there’s a huge element of me writing that song from a Southern-conservative-background way of living and growing up, but then also me feeling protective of a community of people that is marginalized and vilified. So I’m so proud of that song, and seeing the response over the last few days, especially from like the queer community, has been really emotional.
I think it’s a thing that every human will ask themselves before they die: Is this correct? Like, I know that it all ends somewhere, but while we’re here, can we just give each other some grace and not be so know-it-all and end-all be-all? I think that’s the kindest way of living out however long you have here. Or, what if there’s an afterlife? — either way, we all end in some way. So that’s where our head was at when we were writing it that day.
And I think I’m channeling so much of my early obsession with Patty Griffin vocally on that song. By the end, I’m just letting her rip, and it felt almost religious, in a way that’s not institutional, doing the vocal for that song, with all the ad libs at the end. I’m not going by a book.
I’m just feeling and connecting with whatever higher power there is and improvising. That’s such a scary but free place as a vocalist, and it makes me feel connected to any part of spirituality in myself when I can just sing. So I love with that song ending on a place of just like, “Let her go, and we’ll choose the best take.
” Just really feeling it out and giving yourself the grace to mess up — I think that was a cool parallel with that song and then the content and meaning of it. You mentioned feeling connected with the queer community with that song. You’ve stood up for parts of the community, sometimes drawing some real ire, like when you argued with Jason Aldean’s wife when she seemed to be having trans kids as the butt of her humor.
If you had it to do over again, would you be as outspoken as you were on that? Would I do it again? Yeah. I mean, as a mother, my son just turned 5, and it’s so wild watching him grow up. He’s a native Nashvillian; his mom’s a Texan; his dad’s from Michigan.
We’re both in the arts, and both in the community of Nashville. Really, most parents just want their kid to grow up healthy and happy and feel protected, at home and at school. And I have loved watching my son grow up and explore his creative interests, including his favorite colors.
Some weeks it’s pink. Some weeks it’s green, because that’s my favorite color. You know, they’re kids; they’re exploring personality, exploring senses of humor.
They’re so curious. I think that we’re just here to be the lighthouse to all of that. And any sort of like bullying or tamping down, or even picking out something that’s pink or blue or gendered in their way, especially when they’re this little, I think is such a bizarre mode of guiding.
I think we’re all doing our best, and I’ll never be a know-it-all of parenting, but no one should be. But I certainly have noticed that he feels the most safe and protected when we’re just letting him explore his interests and knowing that we’ve got his back no matter what. Did you feel any freer with this album, because of who you were aligned with in creating it? It feels like you’ve followed your own path all along, but as far as being beholden to producing a country single, per se, that’s not where your interests lay here.
It does feel like there are country songs on this album — “Too Good” has such a country melody, but it’s not produced in a way that shouts country. But you’re letting your pop freak flag fly, and not in a way that suggests you’re capitalizing on “The Middle,” like people feared when you had that crossover hit. There’s a long history of more independentlty minded artists who come out of the country world making deals with the coastal execs instead of sticking with their companies’ Nashville divisions, like the Chicks.
Did making that move to affiliate with Columbia in New York help produce the tenor of the album? I think I was always going to be writing with the same people, regardless of being on the New York label or Sony Nashville. I was always writing with Julia Michaels. I was already writing with Jack Antonoff when I made the switch.
So who’s to say how it would’ve ended up on the other label. But to circle back to what you said earlier: I’ve always felt free as an artist, musically. But I think this is probably my boldest record in terms of production, but also lyrically — I would say it’s the boldest and most vulnerable lyrics I’ve delivered.
I think I’ve always been brave as an artist, but as the person that gets off-stage and is just the songwriter or the mom or the friend...
You know, I’m a really soft-hearted person, and I think that I still, up until the last few years, had been in a deep people-pleasing mentality since I was a kid. I think it’s taken me a lot of years to live up to my own word and my own music, because my music is sometimes bolder than I am as a person. So now I feel like this is the first record where both Marens meet on the same side of the street, and I’m not just looking at a caricature or an amplified version of me.
I am her through and through, and now it’s aligned in the most healthy way, if that makes sense. Maybe you wouldn’t have gotten any interference when you were more solidly in the country universe for doing a song as open about sexuality as “Bed No Breakfast” is on this album. Or maybe you would have; it’s a little bolder in certain ways, even being in a somewhat comical mode.
.. Well, I always have some song on every album about sex.
I feel like even with “Make Out With Me” or “RSVP” on “Girl”...
“Make Out With Me” was definitely a little bit humorous. But no, “Bed No Breakfast” is certainly a different take on the boldness of female sexuality, being unapologetic and also being a little bit rude. I think there’s sort of a take-back-ness in that song on this album that I love.
I feel like a lot of women now, or men, but just in modern dating...
It feels like it’s meeting that moment, because that’s the headspace I was in when I wrote it, addressing the plagues of modern dating. You have to be a little bit bitchy, which is okay with me. Producer-wise, you collaborated with a lot of people on this album, whereas your earlier records were dominated by one or two producers at a time.
This time you really reached out to a lot of people. Did that feel deliberately experimental, or was it just the natural result of spreading things out and not doing the whole record at once? I was so loyal to a producer on my first three records, working with Busbee, then working with Greg Kirsten, both just incredible music minds who really created a shape of sound with me over those years. On this record, for “Dreamsicle,” because it was happening over so many years and so many seasons of my personal life and professional, I was ending up in rooms with a lot of people I’m a fan of, who are writers but they’re also producers.
So it’s not one of those things where you’re like, “Hey, I’ll write this with you today, but then don’t worry about the music portion, because I’m gonna bring this to a studio with a producer and a band over a two-week span and just record, record, record.” In the modern world of pop and writing a ton in L.A.
and New York, I’m writing with these people that are incredible songwriters, but also incredible producers. So it was my job — and obviously the mixer’s job — to make sure all of these songs, all 13, live together in harmony and made sense to the ear, and also in a storytelling way, which is my job as the artist who’s living all of these lyrics. I wrote probably 95 songs altogether for this project.
And the songs I did with Jack Antonoff, they all felt like a marriage, and then the songs I did with Joel Little felt like a union, and then the songs I did with Naomi McPherson from Muna...
I started ending up collecting songs with each producer, and I felt like that was making the flow of the sound make more sense and was just really exciting to my ear as a listener. It didn’t feel monotonous. It felt like, even though it flows, because there were several production minds on it, there’s an unexpectedness after each song.
The Jack Antonoff tracks feel like some of the least Jack Antonoff-sounding songs on the record. That’s so funny. I’ve never thought about it that way.
But yeah, if you’re listening to something like Bleachers or Lorde, comparative to the songs he has on this album...
he’s extremely versatile, sonically. I think his gift is he comes in and makes each of us feel catered to and heard, and the music he makes in the studio when we’re writing bends around the artist, not the other way around. How does it feel having it out in the world and having people hear the whole body of work after giving them a bunch of teasers? Yeah, I know, it’s one of those things where the EP was a good chunk of the full record, so by the time the full album’s coming out, you wonder if people are gonna care to hear the rest of it.
But I think in this day and age, people are just wanting new songs constantly, so I just had to stick by my work and believe in myself and the songs. I know that with the rest of this story being told, the cohesion will be there and it’ll string the EP songs in and fill in the rest of the story. Now that it’s been out in the universe, I’m so bowled over by the response.
...
This is the fun part. The songs have lived only in my head for this many years, and I get a lot of context once they’re out and people start listening to the record front to back on repeat and the favorites in their mind become clear. It helps me decide on the set list for tour.
Quite frankly, the fans have always navigated my priority list. Of course I want it to be an even flow and an emotional story arc happening in the set for tour, but these first few weeks of the record being out and people deciding what the favorites are helps me carve out the tour vibe. It’ll be fun to get into tour rehearsals in a couple months and really figure out how to polish up these songs in a way that translates and integrates into the older stuff in a live setting.
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